Spotsylvania School Board to Consider Revised Regulation Governing the Selection and Review of Library and Instructional Materials
Approval of the revised regulation is on the consent agenda for Monday's School Board meeting.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
The Spotsylvania School Board will consider approving revisions to regulation IIA-R, which lays out the process for selecting and reviewing instructional and library materials, at its meeting on Monday.
Approval of the revised regulation is included in the consent agenda for the meeting. The revisions were recommended by a committee formed by the School Board in March of this year to look at the regulation and its governing policy, IIA, which establishes procedures for schools to identify and ensure parental notification of instructional materials with sexually explicit content.
The School Board approved revisions to IIA in June by a 5-to-2 vote, with Lee Hill representative Lisa Phelps and Berkeley representative April Gillespie voting against approval.
The revised regulation describes the principle behind the selection of instructional and library materials, the personnel involved in the process of selecting materials, and the criteria for selecting materials.
The bulk of the changes relate to the method by which instructional and library materials can be challenged.
The regulation states that “Priority will be given to challenges filed by parents or guardians of students who attend SCPS and who are currently and directly affected by the use of specific materials” and that “Procedures should conserve limited staff resources and discourage the monopolization of the challenge process and require complainants to submit complete, substantive challenge requests.”
It also states that only one challenge can be in review at each school building at any time, and only one challenge can be at the division-wide review level at any time.
Individuals would be limited to four challenges within a school year and will not be allowed to file a new challenge until the previously filed challenge has been decided.
The process for challenging both library materials and instructional materials starts with a school-level conference at which complainants may request that the material be withdrawn from use “for their student only.”
The school principal is responsible for the first level review of challenged instructional material. Formal challenges of library material will go the Chief Academic Officer for first review and “the material in question will remain in circulation (if copies are available) throughout the review process.”
“The material will not be removed from the library unless the outcome deems it appropriate to do so,” the new regulation states.
Complainants can appeal these first-level reviews to the division level, which involves review by a committee assembled by the Chief Academic Officer. Committee members will include a teacher or staff member from the local school; a parent of a currently enrolled student; a county resident with no school affiliation; a principal or assistant principal; and a high school student from the local school, if the challenge involves high school material.
The revised regulation also includes a detailed outline of the duties and procedures of the review committees.
Complainants can appeal the decision of the review committees to the superintendent and then the School Board.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
Seriously?